One of the reasons I like playing battlegrounds so much is the casual nature of queuing for them. I can go about my dailies while waiting for an invitation to pop, letting Blizzard do the work of putting a team of like-minded people together. I don’t have to go assemble a crack team of 39 of my close friends to go freeze their buns off in the Alterac mountains, and then herd them all up to an island off the coast of Northrend. Instead, I get to check off some options and, if I think I’ve got 20 minutes to spare when the invitation comes, click “Yes, I would like to engage in mortal combat with other players please.” Or something like that.

It’s hard to imagine not having a battleground queue now. It is so easy, so convenient, that the idea of having to actually go to the battleground in question is strange and antiquated. I still get lost on my way to the WSG portal!

Battleground queues really help make BGs accessible to anyone who wants to try them out. And while I lament the loss of the pre-Wintergrasp party that queuing brought to that battleground, overall I think it’s a great strength of the system.

So, it’s not hard to imagine that a similar change is in store towards dungeon portals with the release of 3.3’s LFG tool.

I ran Deadmines last night using it, and it was a totally surreal experience. I got to the first boss before I realized we were actually in the instance – I somehow thought we were still pulling trash on the way into the cave! That run from Moonbrook to the portal is so ingrained that even with all available evidence, like, oh, standing in front of the portal and buffing, I was still surprised to see that big silly orge standing there.

(I also ran H UK as a guild random dungeon and thought I was going to UP until I zoned in.)

I made the run to the Warsong Gulch portal today on my level 19 twink, and it’s a long, long journey through a zone that can kill you a lot. It goes without saying that I wouldn’t do that run a lot to go PvP, but it is interesting that people have been doing exactly that to run instances. Someone in the party had to get to the Summoning Stone, after all.

The convenience of running instances suddenly opens up a new leveling strategy – run random dungeons and battlegrounds instead of questing. I have known a lot of people who swear by instance leveling, and in most cases the loot is the best you can get. Combining this with some battlegrounds gives you variety without sacrificing loot or money.

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10 responses to “The Queue”

I actually have a friend who has started an experiment to see if he can level 1-80 solely doing instances and class quests. Believe he’s leveling a warlock.🙂 I have to admit the idea is tempting.

This might make at least a few of the old-world instances with absolutely horrendous outside-of-instance trash likable again. (Uldaman, I’m looking at you.)

Did you know this can turn up instances in the enemy cities? Some Horde player was noting yesterday on Twitter that the random instance tool queued them up for Stockades. That’s pretty cool right there.

It’s a more cool on the Alliance front than Horde since RFC actually has some decent low level drops while Stocks only offers cloth and experience in most cases with the horrible drop rate on the blue items there.

I have only one problem with the zoning in process that happens now: Places like the new 5-man ICC dungeon location are relatively unknown. Unless you’re a regular participant on the PTRs or you’re a voracious reader of all things patch-related (which I am neither), there’s a high tendency to get lost if you happen to, say, wipe.

And if you’ve happened to PUG a new instance and wipe, there’s a distinct feeling of helplessness when you have to ask in /p, “Uh…how do I get back inside again?”

The only problem I’ve run into with it is that you can’t queue for both instances and BGs at the same time. When one queue is taking forever your only options are to wait it out or drop the one to pick up the other.

I love the new feature, though I can certainly see where Arrens is coming from there. Lucky for me, I don’t give a crap about Northrend and I know where all of the instances before that can be found so that I don’t end up getting lost.

Leveling through dungeons is definitely the best way to keep yourself geared and you can spend your time between queues gathering up all the quests that you’ll need for them. The only time you find better loot than what’s available inside the instance is when you look at rewards for completing the quests therein.

“(I also ran H UK as a guild random dungeon and thought I was going to UP until I zoned in.)”

I quite enjoy the guess-what-dungeon-it-is-from-the-loading-screen game myself. Looks like you could use some improvement, Cyn!

Yeah I’m going to stop leveling my little Mage when she hits 28 and just run Scarlet Monastery as much as I can using this system. I love those instances but the trip getting there as an Alliance is a real draw back.

I wonder if Alliance can now queue to do that instance in Ogrimmar?

I’ll be a lot of Horde are thrilled about easy access to VC, like I am about SM.

Nah. I’m no longer terrified of dungeons, but they’re really not my thing. I’m a competent 10-man raider who gets bored easily and draws family aggro whenever I step inside a raid, so I’ve come to terms that I’ll never be really good at it or see all the content.

I’m okay with that, though I confess — there are times I’m a bit jealous of y’all’s awesome 25-man uberleet prowess. I know how hard it is to raid well, and I salute anyone who can do it.

I’d heard people tell stories about leveling solely by instances too and I always wondered how that ever happened (partly because I didn’t really know exactly how much experience you could get from an instance and partly because it was so hard to get low level groups) but now I see that it completely helps! It’s ever so nice🙂